


That Would Be Enough

by Nabatean_Nan



Category: Fire Emblem: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem: Three Houses
Genre: Ambiguous Route, F/M, Mentions of other characters - Freeform, i finished blue lions and im only a little ways through the church route so have mercy on me, i mean other than its not black eagles lmao, mature rating for a bonus (brief) picante ending, minor spoilers for seteth and flayn
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-17
Updated: 2019-08-17
Packaged: 2020-09-06 07:04:26
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,857
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20287390
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Nabatean_Nan/pseuds/Nabatean_Nan
Summary: Byleth has trouble sleeping throughout the war.





	That Would Be Enough

**Author's Note:**

> the name for this fic came from the fact that five minutes before i posted it i realized i didnt have a name and just fast-forwarded through my broadway playlist
> 
> this is my first fic in like literally two years lmao i rise from the dead to stan one (1) green boi. catch me on twitter @nanatee_fanatee so we can talk about this moron who stole my heart

The inability to sleep doesn’t concern Byleth. She just slept for five years, after all. Surely she’s well-rested enough that a few nights without sleep won’t harm her. She spends them walking around the monastery: Figuring out what has changed, but mostly petting the animals. They remember her, she’s happy to find out. 

Shamir has to nudge her awake during a strategy meeting, and that’s when Byleth figures she’s taken this no-sleep thing too far. Everyone stares at her, but she brushes them off and assures them she’s fine. She is; she just needs to actually go to sleep tonight. 

It’s harder than she thought. She lays in her bed for hours, waking with a panic every time she dozes off. At first, she thinks it’s because she dreams of falling. The sort of dream when a person’s brain just reflexively wakes up, startled by what it appeared to be reality. It happens far too often, though, and by the third or fourth time, she realizes what it is. 

She’s afraid to not wake up. 

In five years, she missed so much. Her students growing, learning, some even passing on without her. Territories vanquished, houses annihilated. She’s startled every day by news of something she missed, and fear grips her heart at the realization that it could happen again. She has no idea how it was triggered. Because she fell, nearly died? Or was it simply the whim of Sothis, a necessary evil in an attempt to curb the war? If only the goddess still spoke to her, things would be so much easier. 

Before, when she had trouble sleeping, she’d go to her father. She often wiggled into his bed as a child after nightmares or during storms. He’d kiss her head, and even hum to her at times. He’s dead now, but Byleth still finds herself making her way to his old quarters. They’ve mostly been ransacked, thieves taking every last thing they could, but the memories will never leave that room. 

On her way, she notices light seeping out from beneath Seteth’s door. 

_ We are like family... you can be certain I will never abandon you. _

She doesn’t fully realize she’s knocked on his door until she hears the scraping of his desk chair. By then, it’s too late to retreat. When he opens the door, her gaze falls to the floor out of embarrassment. 

“Byleth,” he says. It nearly sounds like a sigh of relief. “Is there a problem?”

He pauses, waits for an answer, but she can only wring her hands. She can’t recall if she’s ever been this uncertain in front of him. 

“Byleth?”

“I slept for five years,” she mumbles. She still does not meet his gaze. “Will you... make sure I wake tomorrow?”

He relaxes. Of course, she should have realized approaching him in the dead of night would worry him. Perhaps she should have bothered Shamir, even Catherine... Then again, it’s not as though she was entirely conscious in her choice. 

“Of course,” he says, much softer than she thinks she’s heard from him before. “I shall visit you first thing...”

He doesn’t finish his thought, and Byleth realizes too late it’s because she’s frowning. Even with her face angled down, he must be able to see her tense up. Maybe it’s a dad thing. 

“... or you may spend the night in my quarters, if you’d prefer.”

Her nod is soft, but he’s perceptive. He guides her into the room, talking about how she can take the bed and he’ll sleep on his lounge chair. She shakes her head and makes her way over to the chair herself. She won’t inconvenience him any more than she already has with her childish fear. He grabs extra pillows and a blanket for her, then blows out the candle he was using for light. 

Seteth gently shakes her awake, as promised, and she shares breakfast with him and Flayn. The day is better than the one before, though she is still sluggish. Cyril manages a few hits on her with his practice arrows, but his victory is bittersweet. Byleth is still tired. He’s grumpy throughout the rest of the day, and she can’t help but wonder why he wanted to spar with her if he was going to be so moody about the outcome.

Byleth doesn’t even go to her own quarters that night. She does some work in the library and knocks on Seteth’s door when she’s ready to retire. He’s obviously not expecting her a second night, but he lets her in regardless. He lets her in again the third night, and the fourth too. 

Byleth isn’t sure how long she intends to let this go. She doesn’t even attempt to sleep in her quarters, ending her nights in the library and then Seteth’s lounge chair. Even when Seteth is gone scouting for a night, she finds his door unlocked for her. 

On the tenth night, Byleth wakes up in his bed without his gentle shaking. Her eyes flutter open when the sun peaks its light through his windows, and she can’t help but pull his sheets over her chin and take a deep breath of his scent. Nutmeg, or mace? She’s never been adept at recognizing scents, but there is something undoubtedly intoxicating about the cologne he uses. At the very least, it’s better than the sweat her father smelled of. 

When she stands, she gathers the blankets around herself to keep their warmth. She spots him immediately when she walks into the main room. He’s laying out on his lounge chair, a book open on his chest. She walks over to him, the pads of her feet barely making any noise on the stone floor, and replaces the book with herself. 

He is startled, a bit red in the face, when they wake up, but he does not remove the arm that had curled around her as they dozed together. After that morning, she continues to sleep in his bed, then joins him in his chair to doze briefly in the morning. He always wraps an arm around her, and sometimes he even plays with strands of her hair. 

One morning, she is certain she feels him place a kiss on her crown.

By the time Byleth has lost count of the nights she’s spent with him, Flayn joins them for a night. When Byleth enters Seteth’s quarters, the girl is already fast asleep in his bed. 

“She was having nightmares,” he says softly. Byleth is unsurprised. She had to fight former friends today. She settles down beside Flayn for the night, even bringing her into her arms when the girl starts to flinch and whine from her dreams. That is the first night Seteth and Byleth share a bed, the two of them working together to cuddle Flayn’s nightmares away. 

Flayn joins them for a few more nights, before becoming embarrassed at the notion of having to have assistance with sleeping. She returns to her own quarters, but Byleth stays. Flayn’s insistence that she can sleep alone has the gears of Byleth’s head turning. The first night Flayn leaves them, Byleth wraps Seteth’s sheets around herself and walks out to where he is still working. His candles are nearly run to their ends. She should get him new ones. 

“Am I a bother?” She asks softly. 

Seteth startles, and she wonders if perhaps she can be too quiet, sometimes. 

He turns back to face her, his lips pursed. “Not at all. What brings that up?”

She balls up the sheets in her hands and looks at the floor. “Flayn only needed you for a few nights...”

Seteth stands from his chair and approaches her, bringing her into his arms. “Only a few years ago, she was in a similar position as you. Terrified of never waking up. Nightmares are simple, in comparison. You, too, will shake this.”

She falls into his arms, perhaps a bit too comforted at the thought that she is not the only one with this fear. 

Their routine stagnates, until one fell battle. Seteth is injured by an axe to his shoulder, and all Byleth can think is, _ No. _Before he even falls to the ground, she reaches out her left hand. With a sharp twist to the left, she uses a Divine Pulse for the first time since her five year slumber. Byleth tells herself she would have done the same for any of their other allies, that they had only been lucky up until that point that it wasn’t necessary. She is certain she would, but there are not many for which she would simply rush forward and take the axe in their stead. 

She knows she can survive the hit. The wielder of the axe is caught off guard, and furthermore, the majority of the hit is taken by her shield. Her shoulder will be sore, she will undoubtedly bruise, but the blade of the axe doesn’t even come close to cleaving into her. With a determined shout, she thrusts forward and knocks the axe wielder onto the ground. Seteth is able to finish the girl off with his lance, and Byleth doesn’t hear any more about it until that night. 

“What were you thinking?” he admonishes her. She sits in his bed, in nothing but lounge pants and a clean breast band. Her shoulder is a disgusting purple, a bruise far bigger than any she’s ever had before, and Seteth touches it as if it were the finest stained glass. 

How could she possibly tell him that she saw him fall? That she turned back the hands of time just to save him? It would only open up more questions, more answers than Byleth was prepared to give. Besides, they all came down to the same basic answer anyway. She’s had plenty of time to mull it over throughout the day. The reason she reacted so rashly, why she had used the goddess’s power when she’d been so rarely tempted before....

Without even a thought, she simply pulls him forward and places her lips softly on his. He startles for a moment, just as he startles about so many things, but soon a gentle hand is placed on Byleth’s cheek. That night marks the first of many that she spends in his arms.   


~*bonus picante ending*~

She isn’t sure how many nights it took them to get here. Not terribly many, she surmises. Enough that her garish bruise is a soft yellow, now only visible at the peak of her shoulder. She doesn’t really think about it until Seteth reaches up and grips her shoulder so tightly that she hisses at the sting. 

He pulls his hand away immediately, returning it to her hip. “Apologies, my love,” he mumbles. “I had forgotten...”

How cruel, she teases in her mind. That bruise is part of the reason they’re here in the first place. Part of how Byleth gained the courage to straddle his waist, grind down on his cock as he thrusts up into her. 

Well, it certainly isn’t an exact correlation, but it makes sense in Byleth’s mind. 

**Author's Note:**

> i wanna peg the seaweed dad


End file.
